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Crowds flock to debut of Smithgall botanical garden
New Gainesville attraction earns approval of its namesake on a perfect spring day
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Mary Pat Matheson, The Anna and Hays Mershon President and CEO Ex-Officio, speaks at a reception after the grand opening of the Atlanta Botanical Garden Gainesville location, a Smithgall Woodland Legacy, on Saturday. The garden features a visitors center that can be rented for events, a porch with a fireplace, outdoor seating, an amphitheater, two half-mile walking trails and a model train garden. - photo by Erin O. Smith
As she arrived at the garden Saturday evening, Lessie Smithgall was greeted with smiles, hugs, kisses and a hundred echoes of the same sentiment: gratitude. As an honored guest, she sat among those in attendance during a special reception Saturday night for the Atlanta Botanical Garden, a Smithgall Woodland Legacy. In 2001, she and husband Charles donated their 168-acre property north of Gainesville as a gift to the Atlanta Botanical Garden, the plot of land where she and hundreds of others now gathered to celebrate.